Dion Dimucci was one of a handful of performers on the Winter Dance Party tour who didn't board the Beechcraft Bonanza four-seater aircraft on the night of February 3, 1959. Future country music star Waylon Jennings was another who didn't get a seat on this particular jet. Those who did embark were Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson. All three lost their lives that night when their plane went down.
Like many up and coming rock and roll singers, Dion looked up to Buddy Holly. He later admitted that the untimely death of his idol left him confined to his bedroom back in New York for two weeks. Gradually recovering from grief and shock, he resolved to follow Holly's example and make the music that he wanted to make, spurning the commercial pressures that had been on him since emerging as a teenage pop star in 1956. He began exploring blues music, a genre that would become his life's passion. He would leave pop and doo-wop behind.
With all due respect, Dion would have been better off had he been more musically curious. (To be fair, he probably had been that way inclined until the blues came into his life) While it was certain there was far more to him than "A Teenager in Love", he was also capable of more than "three chords and the truth". He had been a great pop star and had developed into a talented singer-songwriter. A folk song like "Abraham, Martin and John" didn't have to be an anomaly. Better yet, it could have been but one of many lifelong anomalies in a musical life that would have benefited from being as all over the place as anyone could imagine.
I admit it's a little out of place to be using a simplistic folk song as an example of creatively stretching out but it's what we have to go on. And even by folk's modest standards, this is basic stuff. The three title characters — Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr and John F. Kennedy — each have a verse devoted to them but they're exactly the same beyond their names being different. They all freed a lot of people (did JFK really free that many individuals of colour, especially compared to Lincoln and MLK?) but the good they die young. Normally I deplore repetitiveness but I'll make an exception in this instance. If anything, it probably works better this way, rather than needlessly elaborating on how they stood apart from one another. The fourth verse is dedicated to the recently assassinated Robert F. Kennedy who, let's be honest, never even had the chance to free anyone at all. Instead, he's spotted on a hill alongside his slain brother, Lincoln and MLK. Touching but superfluous.
Good as "Abraham, Martin and John" is, I'd argue that Dion was capable of writing a better tribute to these fallen leaders, even if only musically. My esteem for the man is complex: I admire his steadfast refusal to do what others expect of him but I sort of feel his output isn't as interesting at least partially as a result. The challenge brought forth by The Beatles invited some to rise to the occasion while others retreated; Dion, by contrast, wasn't interested. While it's commendable that he used Buddy Holly's example to go his own way, he would've done well to have been similarly exploitative rather that confining himself to one particular thing. As his two Canadian number ones suggest, there should have been so much more to him.
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